On Friday, March 9th, Nadine and I met at Game Farm Park and laid tracks for each other. We planned it out in advance so we could lay cross-tracks for our own tracks. So I laid a well-marked track for Cricket and as I finished each leg, Nadine would lay the cross-tracks we planned. Then we went to where Gimme's track was to start and as Nadine laid Gimme's track, I did her cross-tracks. The dark line is the main track and the grey-dotted line is my cross track. Gimme's track was aged 70 minutes.
Gimme did a great job and I didn't see any sign that she found the cross tracks a challenge. She sniffed about 2 feet of the first one and then went right back to the track. She really went fast, almost running, which led to her overshooting the 3rd turn. Of course that meant that she caught my cross track when she was a bit past the real track. So she zigged and zagged and circled. In my impression she wasn't fooled by the incoming cross-track, she just didn't know what to do and hadn't run across the real deal. I was just about to give her some help by organizing her search, when she caught the scent of the article and drove right to it. From there to the end she was flawless.On Saturday, March 10th, Gimme and I went to Medline. Since she had struggled so much the week before with a 1 hour track, I decided to make this one just 50 minutes and made sure it was relatively simple. When I laid the track, the breeze was in my face, which I thought would be a great way to start.
When we ran the track it was at my back, so Gimme was really challenged to get started. It didn't help that there were two sources of contamination. The first was someone walking across the track and the second was a car (dotted lines). Just about the time we were ready to cross the second landscape strip, the breeze changed to come across the track from the left. She did a little better to finish this leg and the third leg, but then struggled with the second and fourth legs. The breeze stayed like this through the end, which explains why the last leg was the best, since it was blowing the track scent right into her face. I am sooooo thankful Gimme is persistent.This Thursday, March 15th, Nadine and I met at Auburn Cinema. The tracks were supposed to be 150 yard straight lines. We put a bend in Gimme's second track. Time got away from us, so her 45 minute track was actually aged 75 minutes.
Gimme had no difficulty doing these two tracks... she just really pushed along like she'd been doing old tracks on pavement all along. As it turned out, something happened to the second and final articles on her second track - they were simply gone. So when Gimme was circling looking for them, I tossed out the end glove from the prior track. Gimme ran to it and then gave me the oddest look. I'm sure she wasn't fooled and knew she'd already eaten cheese off this glove. Still, she is Gimme, so she was happy to go along with the game and do it again.Yesterday, Saturday, March 17th, Gimme and I went to Medline for tracking. Since I hadn't gotten a reply from Sil for my recent questions, I decided to do something different.
I've noticed Gimme can be very visual. She's happy to follow her nose when it seems to work for her, but she is likely to switch to visual mode if it's challenging. This is especially true on pavement where it's so easy to see articles from a distance. Gimme has gotten very good at spotting even just a line of shadow from articles which otherwise blend in. So I made her some new weighted cloth articles, more likely to blend on pavement and really small. I also cut up some of the articles to make them even smaller. The largest article was just 2½ by 2½ inches and some were only 1 inch by 1 inch.
I laid two straight line tracks, with a start sock, 4 or 5 articles and then an end article. I tried to make everything really blend in, or hidden. It seemed she still saw a third of them! So back to the drawing board. I want to be sure we have articles she can't see so she has to rely on her incredibly talented nose. The track was only aged 30 minutes, so she thoroughly enjoyed running it.I got a reply from Sil in the evening. The two questions and answers were:
1) Recently I've noticed what seemed to be a trend where Gimme does great on older tracks laid by Nadine and then still has trouble with tracks I lay. So I wondered if dogs have a harder time following their owner's tracks, since they live with the scent all the time. We know dogs don't habituate to scents in the same way humans do, but I wondered if being around the scent made it not stand out for them.
Sil said it was not generally a problem. He thought it more likely I wasn't aware of some other factor, or factors, creating a challenge.
2) I asked him if I could use scent intensifiers in aging. It seemed like a possibility, but I wondered if intensifying the scent defeated the purpose of aging it.
Sil said there were two factors to track age. One is the weakening of scent, which would apply to scent intensifiers just like normally laid tracks. The other factor is how tracks change chemically with age. So in a sense, starting with a stronger scent splits the task into two parts. Gimme can be learning about the chemical change while still working with a stronger smell. So, I'll be playing with this to help her get over the hump.
Today, March 18th, we didn't get a chance to go for a walk and because of my schedule I needed to have Gimme with me so she could get her medication on time.
Since she had to stay in the car all day, I laid her a track outside MCSA. It was just a short track, mostly on grass, with one road crossing. It was aged 90 minutes.I didn't mark the track or even make a map, so when she got off the track, up under the trees where the ground was covered in needles, I couldn't be sure how to organize her searching. She finally decided on something I thought was too far down, but it got her close enough so she picked up the track in a place where I knew it was and then dragged me to the glove. She got all my cheese and when we got to the car, got her pill in peanut butter.
NOTE TO SELF ---> I really must not take shortcuts when laying a track. Surely I've proven my memory is not accurate enough to rely on.
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